About 5 years ago due to not being able to deal with bovine milk, I embarked upon the nubian goat association of being owned by them. They are an interesting breed due to intelligence and being stubborn.
They are said to be vocal, but the closer my goats get to my home in a pen made of cattle panels, the less sounds they make as long as they are together.
I built my first designed milk station based upon a little doe I had named Annie, who of course was full of worms and the idiot who I bought her from had me using herbal remedies which got her dead, because wormwood crap does not do what Ivomectrin does.
Annie was petite and a sweetheart, so my miling stanchion was petite, and of course my other does and bucks are all big headed monsters now, who can not get their heads in the thing easily.
So I decided to build a portable stanchion pictured above with the dimensions being in parts list:
2 cross headers 2 x 4 x 21
2 cross beams 2 x 4 x 36
2 main beams 2 x 4 x 33
2 stanchion braces 2 x 2 x 40
I had my lumberyard cut them for me and the cost for green lumber, meaning chemical preservatives, was like 12.76.
I will mount this on 2 U steel posts with 4 U bolts which cost something like 12.76 too.
I need to buy a small dowel to have the one stanchion brace pivot on it, and to keep the brace closed in something of the 1/2 inch range as that is what my largest bit is and that will be a bit more as I thought I had them, but the reality is, for around 30 bucks I built somethng that will work on baby calves to goats.
I built this for trimming goat hooves and perhaps summer milking, and if need be I can put 2 wooden posts into the ground and secure them with long wood screws.......18 of them in two to each brace both inside and outside, and 2 for the one non moveable stanchion.
Speaking of which this is fastened together with those power wood screws they now sell, that I'm just in love with, as they are so easy and take all the blisters and work out. If you use nails the things are always coming apart in pounding, and this makes it all so simple that in about 45 minutes of wasting time, I built this thing and can give thanks to God as I'm not miserable in being exhausted.
Did though poke a splinter in the palm of my hand and bled, so christened the head stall with my blood. Always a good thing to do.
I do think I buggered this up though in the 36 and 33 were switched when I assembled, but the Holy Ghost seems to guide my screw ups to making them as they should be, so it looks all Euclid's 47th.
I'm quite pleased with this project, and in reality I would be doing things like this constantly and not witnessing in a blog if I had the money to live life instead of exist. Always was my dream to have a shop to build things and bring old things back to life.
Wood and metal are allot like horses. They communicate with you. I mean by that, they do not like you around until they get used to you, and once they figure out you know what you are doing, they start behaving. Like the stanchion I used no squares on and was all eye balling and it just built itself.
Oh I just remembered, you can get a U hook to screw into the top brace and then hang a bucket off of it, and goats will feed on grain as you torment them in hoof trimming.. Most have a brace mid way down for grain troughs, but this works for me in being a sizable hook for sturdiness.
Well at least me closer done with this as Mom said than last year.....and I found out I still bleed red.
agtG
Post Script: As things lay here in archives for a coon's age sometimes, upon use this device really works wonderfully well. Am very pleased with God's Inspiration in the brain.
